The Life of John Marshall, Volume 1: Frontiersman, soldier, lawmaker, 1755-1788

While Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury he received several letters from John Marshall, an Englishman, who was in this country and who wrote Hamilton concerning the subject of establishing manufactories. (Hamilton MSS., Lib. Cong.)

Illustrations like these might be continued for many pages. They merely show the danger of inferring relationship because of the similarity of names, especially one so general as that of Marshall.

52

The Cary Papers, supra. Here again the Marshall legend riots fantastically. This time it makes the pirate Blackbeard the first husband of Marshall's paternal grandmother; and with this freebooter she is said to have had thrilling and melancholy experiences. It deserves mention only as showing the absurdity of such myths. Blackbeard was one Edward Teach, whose career is well authenticated (Wise, 186.) Colonel Cary put a final quietus on this particular tale, as he did on so many other genealogical fictions.

53

See Douglas: Peerage of Scotland (1764), 448. Also Burke: Peerage (1903), 895; and ib. (1876). This peerage is now extinct. See Burke: Extinct Peerages.

54

For appreciation of this extraordinary man see Carlyle's Frederick the Great.

55

Paxton, 30.

56

From data furnished by Justice James Keith, President of the Court of Appeals of Virginia.

57

Paxton, 30; and see Meade, ii, 216.

58

Data furnished by Thomas Marshall Smith of Baltimore, Md.

59

With this lady the tradition deals most unkindly and in highly colored pictures. An elopement, the deadly revenge of outraged brothers, a broken heart and resulting insanity overcome by gentle treatment, only to be reinduced in old age by a fraudulent Enoch Arden letter apparently written by the lost love of her youth – such are some of the incidents with which this story clothes Marshall's maternal grandmother. (Paxton, 25-26.)

60

Autobiography.

61

In general, Virginia women at this time had very little education (Burnaby, 57.) Sometimes the daughters of prominent and wealthy families could not read or write. (Bruce: Inst., i, 454-55.) Even forty years after John Marshall was born, there was but one girls' school in Virginia. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 227.) In 1789, there were very few schools of any kind in Virginia, it appears. (Journal, H.B. (Dec. 14, 1789), 130; and see infra, chap. VI.)

62

Paxton, 30. Marischal College, Aberdeen, was founded by George Keith, Fifth Earl Marischal (1593).

63

See infra, chap. II. When Leeds Parish was organized, we find Thomas Marshall its leading vestryman. He was always a stanch churchman.

64

Jones, 35; Burnaby,58. But see Maxwell in William and Mary College Quarterly, xix, 73-103; and see Bruce: Econ., i, 425, 427, 585, 587.

65

"Though tobacco exhausts the land to a prodigious degree, the proprietors take no pains to restore its vigor; they take what the soil will give and abandon it when it gives no longer. They like better to clear new lands than to regenerate the old." (De Warville, 439; and see Fithian, 140.)

The land produced only "four or five bushels of wheat per acre or from eight to ten of Indian corn. These fields are never manured, hardly even are they ploughed; and it seldom happens that their owners for two successive years exact from them these scanty crops… The country … everywhere exhibits the features of laziness, of ignorance, and consequently of poverty." (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 106-07, describing land between Richmond and Petersburg, in 1797; and see Schoepf, ii, 32, 48; and Weld, i, 138, 151.)

66

Burnaby, 45, 59. The estate of Richard Randolph of Curels, in 1742 embraced "not less than forty thousand acres of the choicest lands." (Garland, i, 7.) The mother of George Mason bought ten thousand acres in Loudoun County for an insignificant sum. (Rowland, i, 51.) The Carter plantation in 1774 comprised sixty thousand acres and Carter owned six hundred negroes. (Fithian, 128.) Compare with the two hundred acres and few slaves of John Marshall "of the forest," supra.

Half a century later the very best lands in Virginia with valuable mines upon them sold for only eighteen dollars an acre. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 124.) For careful account of the extent of great holdings in the seventeenth century see Wertenbaker: P. and P., 34-35, 97-99. Jefferson in 1790 owned two hundred slaves and ten thousand acres of very rich land on the James River. (Jefferson to Van Staphorst, Feb. 28, 1790; Works: Ford, vi, 33.) Washington owned enormous quantities of land, and large numbers of slaves. His Virginia holdings alone amounted to thirty-five thousand acres. (Beard: Econ. I. C., 144.)

67

Burnaby, 54.

68

In the older counties the slaves outnumbered the whites; for instance, in 1790 Westmoreland County had 3183 whites, 4425 blacks, and 114 designated as "all others." In 1782 in the same county 410 slave-owners possessed 4536 slaves and 1889 horses. (Va. Mag. Hist. and Biog., x, 229-36.)

69

Ambler, 11. The slaves of some planters were valued at more than thirty thousand pounds sterling. (Fithian, 286; and Schoepf, ii, 38; also, Weld, i, 148.)

70

Robert Carter was a fine example of this rare type. (See Fithian, 279-80.)

71

Burnaby, 53-54 and 59. "The Virginians … are an indolent haughty people whose thoughts and designs are directed solely towards p[l]aying the lord, owning great tracts of land and numerous troops of slaves. Any man whatever, if he can afford so much as 2-3 [two or three] negroes, becomes ashamed of work, and goes about in idleness, supported by his slaves." (Schoepf, ii, 40.)

72

"Notes on Virginia"; Works: Ford, iv, 82-83. See La Rochefoucauld, iii, p. 161, on Jefferson's slaves.

73

Jefferson to Chastellux, Sept. 2, 1785; Thomas Jefferson Correspondence, Bixby Collection: Ford, 12; and see Jefferson's comparison of the sections of the country, ib. and infra, chap. VI.

74

"Many of the wealthier class were to be seen seeking relief from the vacuity of idleness, not merely in the allowable pleasures of the chase and the turf, but in the debasing ones of cock-fighting, gaming, and drinking." (Tucker, i, 18; and see La Rochefoucauld, iii, 77; Weld, i, 191; also infra, chap. VII, and references there given.)

75

Jones, 48, 49, and 52; Chastellux, 222-24; also, translator's note to ib., 292-93. The following order from the Records of the Court of Rappahannock County, Jan. 2, 1688 (sic), p. 141, is illustrative: —

"It having pleased Almighty God to bless his Royall Mahst. with the birth of a son & his subjects with a Prince of Wales, and for as much as his Excellency hath sett apart the 16th. day of this Inst. Janr'y. for solemnizing the same. To the end therefore that it may be don with all the expressions of joy this County is capable of, this Court have ordered that Capt. Geo. Taylor do provide & bring to the North Side Courthouse for this county as much Rum or other strong Liquor with sugar proportionable as shall amount to six thousand five hundred pounds of Tobb. to be distributed amongst the Troops of horse, Compa. of foot and other persons that shall be present at the Sd. Solemnitie. And that the said sum be allowed him at the next laying of the Levey. As also that Capt. Samll. Blomfield provide & bring to the South side Courthouse for this county as much Rum or other strong Liquor Wth. sugar proportionable as shall amount to three thousand five hundred pounds of Tobb. to be distributed as above att the South side Courthouse, and the Sd. sum to be allowed him at the next laying of the Levey."

And see Bruce: Econ., ii, 210-31; also Wise, 320, 327-29. Although Bruce and Wise deal with a much earlier period, drinking seems to have increased in the interval. (See Fithian, 105-14, 123.)

76

As in Massachusetts, for instance. "In most country towns … you will find almost every other house with a sign of entertainment before it… If you sit the evening, you will find the house full of people, drinking drams, flip, toddy, carousing, swearing." (John Adams's Diary, describing a New England county, in 1761; Works: Adams, ii, 125-26. The Records of Essex County, Massachusetts, now in process of publication by the Essex Institute, contain many cases that confirm the observation of Adams.)

77

Meade, i, 52-54; and see Schoepf, ii, 62-63.

78

Wise, 317-19; Bruce: Inst., i, 308-15.

79

Bruce: Inst., i, 317-22; and see especially, Va. Mag. Hist. and Biog., ii, 196 et seq.

80

Ib., 323-30; also Fithian, 50 et seq.

81

Bruce: Inst., i, 331-42.

82

Ib., 452-53.

83

Ib., 456-57. Bruce shows that two thirds of the women who joined in deeds could not write. This, however, was in the richer section of the colony at a much earlier period. Just before the Revolution Virginia girls, even in wealthy families, "were simply taught to read and write at 25/ [shillings] and a load of wood per year – A boarding school was no where in Virginia to be found." (Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy; MS.) Part of this letter appears in the Atlantic Monthly series cited hereafter (see chap. V); but the teacher's pay is incorrectly printed as "pounds" instead of "shillings." (Atlantic Monthly, lxxxiv, 544-45.)

84

Bruce: Inst., i, 402-42; and see Wise, 313-15. Professor Tucker says that "literature was neglected, or cultivated, by the small number who had been educated in England, rather as an accomplishment and a mark of distinction than for the substantial benefits it confers." (Tucker, i, 18.)

85

Fithian, 177.

86

See catalogue in W. and M. C. Q., x and xi.

87

See catalogue in Appendix A to Byrd's Writings: Bassett.

88

See catalogue of John Adams's Library, in the Boston Public Library.

89

Ambler, 9; and see Wise, 68-70.

90

Trustworthy data on this subject is given in the volumes of the Va. Mag. Hist. and Biog.; see also W. and M. C. Q.

91

Wertenbaker: P. and P., 14-20. But see William G. Stanard's exhaustive review of Mr. Wertenbaker's book in Va. Mag. Hist. and Biog., xviii, 339-48.

92

"One hundred young maids for wives, as the former ninety sent. One hundred boys more for apprentices likewise to the public tenants. One hundred servants to be disposed among the old planters which they exclusively desire and will pay the company their charges." (Virginia Company Records, i, 66; and see Fithian, 111.)

93

For the understanding in England at that period of the origin of this class of Virginia colonists see Defoe: Moll Flanders, 65 et seq. On transported convicts see Amer. Hist. Rev., ii. 12 et seq. For summary of the matter see Channing, i, 210-14, 226-27.

94

Fithian to Greene, Dec. 1, 1773; Fithian, 280.

95

Fithian to Peck, Aug. 12, 1774; Fithian, 286-88; and see Professor Tucker's searching analysis in Tucker, i, 17-22; also see Lee, in Ford: P. on C., 296-97. As to a genuinely aristocratic group, the New York patroons were, perhaps, the most distinct in the country.

96

Wertenbaker: P. and P., 14-20; also Va. Mag. Hist. and Biog., xviii, 339-48.

97

For accounts of brutal physical combats, see Anburey, ii, 310 et seq. And for dueling, though at an earlier period, see Wise, 329-31. The practice of dueling rapidly declined; but fighting of a violent and often repulsive character persisted, as we shall see, far into the nineteenth century. Also, see La Rochefoucauld, Chastellux, and other travelers, infra, chap. VII.

98

Schoepf, i, 261; and see references, infra, chap. VII.

99

After Braddock's defeat the Indians "extended their raids … pillaging and murdering in the most ruthless manner… The whole country from New York to the heart of Virginia became the theatre of inhuman barbarities and heartless destruction." (Lowdermilk, 186.)

100

Although the rifle did not come into general use until the Revolution, the firearms of this period have been so universally referred to as "rifles" that I have, for convenience, adopted this inaccurate term in the first two chapters.

101

"Their actions are regulated by the wildness of the neighbourhood. The deer often come to eat their grain, the wolves to destroy their sheep, the bears to kill their hogs, the foxes to catch their poultry. This surrounding hostility immediately puts the gun into their hands, … and thus by defending their property, they soon become professed hunters; … once hunters, farewell to the plough. The chase renders them ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable; a hunter wants no neighbour, he rather hates them… The manners of the Indian natives are respectable, compared with this European medley. Their wives and children live in sloth and inactivity… You cannot imagine what an effect on manners the great distance they live from each other has… Eating of wild meat … tends to alter their temper… I have seen it." (Crèvecœur, 66-68.) Crèvecœur was himself a frontier farmer. (Writings: Sparks, ix, footnote to 259.)

102

"Many families carry with them all their decency of conduct, purity of morals, and respect of religion; but these are scarce." (Crèvecœur, 70.) Crèvecœur says his family was one of these.

103

This bellicose trait persisted for many years and is noted by all contemporary observers.

104

Story, in Dillon, iii, 334.

105

The records of Westmoreland County do not show what disposition Thomas Marshall made of the one hundred acres given him by his mother. (Letter of Albert Stuart, Deputy Clerk of Westmoreland County, Virginia, to the author, Aug. 26, 1913.) He probably abandoned it just as John Washington and Thomas Pope abandoned one thousand acres of the same land. (Supra.)

106

Westmoreland County is on the Potomac River near its entrance into Chesapeake Bay. Prince William is about thirty miles farther up the river. Marshall was born about one hundred miles by wagon road from Appomattox Creek, northwest toward the Blue Ridge and in the wilderness.

107

Campbell, 404-05.

108

More than forty years later the country around the Blue Ridge was still a dense forest. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 173.) And the road even from Richmond to Petersburg, an hundred miles east and south of the Marshall cabin, as late as 1797 ran through "an almost uninterrupted succession of woods." (Ib., 106; and see infra, chap. VII.)

109

John, 1755; Elizabeth, 1756; Mary, 1757; Thomas, 1761.

110

Binney, in Dillon, iii, 284.

111

The ancient trunks of one or two of these trees still stand close to the house.

112

British map of 1755; Virginia State Library.

113

See La Rochefoucauld, iii, 707. These "roads" were scarcely more than mere tracks through the forests. See chap. VII, infra, for description of roads at the period between the close of the Revolution and the beginning of our National Government under the Constitution. Even in the oldest and best settled colonies the roads were very bad. Chalkley's Augusta County (Va.) Records show many orders regarding roads; but, considering the general state of highways, (see infra, chap. VII) these probably concerned very primitive efforts. When Thomas Marshall removed his family to the Blue Ridge, the journey must have been strenuous even for that hardship-seasoned man.

114

She was born in 1737. (Paxton, 19.)

115

At this time, Thomas Marshall had at least two slaves, inherited from his father. (Will of John Marshall "of the forest," Appendix I.) As late as 1797 (nearly forty years after Thomas Marshall went to "The Hollow"), La Rochefoucauld found that even on the "poorer" plantations about the Blue Ridge the "planters, however wretched their condition, have all of them one or two negroes." (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 135.)

116

Personal inspection.

117

Mill-sawed weather-boarding, held by cut nails, now covers the sides of the house, the original broad whip-sawed boards, fastened by wrought nails, having long since decayed.

118

Practically all log cabins, at that time, had only one story.

119

See infra.

120

Six more children were born while the Marshalls remained in "The Hollow": James M., 1764; Judith, 1766; William and Charles, 1767; Lucy, 1768; and Alexander, 1770.

121

Nearly twenty years later, "Winchester was rude, wild, as nature had made it," but "it was less so than its inhabitants." (Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy, describing Winchester in 1777, from personal observation; MS.)

122

See Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy, infra, chap. V.

123

John Marshall, when at the height of his career, liked to talk of these times. "He ever recurred with fondness to that primitive mode of life, when he partook with a keen relish of balm tea and mush; and when the females used thorns for pins." (Howe, 263, and see Hist. Mag., iii, 166.)

Most of the settlers on the frontier and near frontier did not use forks or tablecloths. Washington found this condition in the house of a Justice of the Peace. "When we came to supper there was neither a Cloth upon ye Table nor a knife to eat with; but as good luck would have it, we had knives of our [own]." (Writings: Ford, i, 4.)

Chastellux testifies that, thirty years later, the frontier settlers were forced to make almost everything they used. Thus, as population increased, necessity developed men of many trades and the little communities became self-supporting. (Chastellux, 226-27.)

124

More than a generation after Thomas Marshall moved to "The Hollow" in the Blue Ridge large quantities of bear and beaver skins were brought from the Valley into Staunton, not many miles away, just over the Ridge. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 179-80.) The product of the Blue Ridge itself was sent to Fredericksburg and Alexandria. (See Crèvecœur, 63-65.) Thirty years earlier (1733) Colonel Byrd records that "Bears, Wolves, and Panthers" roamed about the site of Richmond; that deer were plentiful and rattlesnakes considered a delicacy. (Byrd's Writings: Bassett, 293, 318-19.)

125

See infra, chap. VII.

126

Even forty years later, all "store" merchandise could be had in this region only by hauling it from Richmond, Fredericksburg, or Alexandria. Transportation from the latter place to Winchester cost two dollars and a half per hundredweight. In 1797, "store" goods of all kinds cost, in the Blue Ridge, thirty per cent more than in Philadelphia. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 203.) From Philadelphia the cost was four to five dollars per hundredweight. While there appear to have been country stores at Staunton and Winchester, over the mountains (Chalkley's Augusta County (Va.) Records), the cost of freight to those places was prohibitive of anything but the most absolute necessities even ten years after the Constitution was adopted.

127

Hist. Mag., iii, 166; Howe, 263; also, Story, in Dillon, iii, 334.

128

Story, in Dillon, iii, 331-32.

129

Ib.

130

See Binney, in Dillon, iii, 285.

131

"Fauquier was then a frontier county … far in advance of the ordinary reach of compact population." (Story, in Dillon, iii, 331; also see New York Review (1838), iii, 333.) Even a generation later (1797), La Rochefoucauld, writing from personal investigation, says (iii, 227-28): "There is no state so entirely destitute of all means of public education as Virginia."

132

See Binney, in Dillon, iii, 285.

133

Story, in Dillon, iii, 330.

134

Marshall to Story, July 31, 1833; Story, ii, 150.

135

See infra, chaps. VII and VIII.

136

"A taste for reading is more prevalent [in Virginia] among the gentlemen of the first class than in any other part of America; but the common people are, perhaps, more ignorant than elsewhere." (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 232.) Other earlier and later travelers confirm this statement of this careful French observer.

137

Story thinks that Thomas Marshall, at this time, owned Milton, Shakespeare, and Dryden. (Dillon, iii, 331.) This is possible. Twenty years later, Chastellux found Milton, Addison, and Richardson in the parlor of a New Jersey inn; but this was in the comparatively thickly settled country adjacent to Philadelphia. (Chastellux, 159.)

138

Story, in Dillon, iii, 331, and Binney, in ib., 283; Hist. Mag., iii, 166.

139

Lang: History of English Literature, 384; and see Gosse: History of Eighteenth Century Literature, 131; also, Traill: Social England, V, 72; Stephen: Alexander Pope, 62; and see Cabot to Hamilton, Nov. 29, 1800; Cabot: Lodge, 299.

140

Binney, in Dillon, iii, 283-84; Washington's Diary; MS., Lib. Cong.

141

Irving, i, 45; and Lodge: Washington, i, 59. Many years later when he became rich, Washington acquired a good library, part of which is now in the Boston Athenæum. But as a young and moneyless surveyor he had no books of his own and his "book" education was limited and shallow.

142

Binney, in Dillion, iii, 281-84.

143

Irving, i, 37, 45; and Sparks, 10.

144

Irving, i, 27.

145

Irving, i, 46.

146

As will appear, the Fairfax estate is closely interwoven into John Marshall's career. (See vol. II of this work.)

147

For description of Greenway Court see Pecquet du Bellet, ii, 175.

148

Washington's Writings: Ford, i, footnote to 329.

149

For a clear but laudatory account of Lord Fairfax see Appendix No. 4 to Burnaby, 197-213. But Fairfax could be hard enough on those who opposed him, as witness his treatment of Joist Hite. (See infra, chap. V.)

150

When the Revolution came, however, Fairfax was heartily British. The objection which the colony made to the title to his estate doubtless influenced him.

151

Fairfax was a fair example of the moderate, as distinguished from the radical or the reactionary. He was against both irresponsible autocracy and unrestrained democracy. In short, he was what would now be termed a liberal conservative (although, of course, such a phrase, descriptive of that demarcation, did not then exist). Much attention should be given to this unique man in tracing to their ultimate sources the origins of John Marshall's economic, political, and social convictions.